


Wilful and Unfemininely Determined

by Nineveh_uk



Category: Daddy-Long-Legs - Jean Webster
Genre: Epistolary, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 17:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5878636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nineveh_uk/pseuds/Nineveh_uk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Judy writes to Jervis during their engagement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wilful and Unfemininely Determined

Dear Jervis - 

I have decided that this really is the most sensible thing to call you, but if you don't like it I will call you something else. I will probably call you something else in my next letter anyway, as my mind feels like a whirligig these days.

No, you will _not_ come to Lock Willow Farm for us to arrange to be married by Christmas. You will come to Lock Willow Farm - and I long for it every day, do get well enough to travel, I am sure that you will come on in leaps with Mrs Semple's cooking and the atmosphere of this place - and we will see if we really want to be married to each other and arrange it for the spring. I hope that you do, because I am absolutely decided upon it. Do I sound wilful and unfemininely determined? Well, I am! But you will see why I must say this, and why I can't just fly to your arms before the year is out. Consider what your life has been, and then consider mine. You have had years and years of doing exactly you like - not everything you like, and not entirely free of responsibilities, I don't imagine there is any man on earth who has that - but a lot of it. And consider mine. The John Grier Home, and then, thanks to you, darling man, four years of college. They were glorious years, Jervie, and even if we had met and you had been old girl-hating Daddy Long-Legs and disliked me on sight I would never, ever have stopped being grateful for them, but if college is a world away from the John Grier Home it still has its bells and timetables and community. I have heard so many lectures, Jervie, and read so many texts on the value of college for teaching young men and women to live with other people and be civic-minded and to compromise. If ever I am asked to give a lecture it shall be on the value on living for oneself and being thoroughly selfish. There are plenty of people who do very well at it without help and they need the lectures on compromise, but the poor people who are good at compromise never get taught the virtues of selfishness. 

You see, I am free now, and I can feel it every minute. I have money of my own, really my own, though you needn't worry that I am going to start talking about paying you back again, because what you said about that having always been my money and if I ever felt it weigh heavy I should give it to another orphan girl and not to a very rich man was sound philosophy and I have adopted it as my own. Of course, Mrs Semple cares for me and cooks for me, and I am very glad that she does, but if I didn't care for it I could go elsewhere and cook for myself or starve, and surely the latter. It is a good thing that you are a very rich man, Jervie, because I cannot cook at all. Mrs Semple tries to teach me, but I think that she despairs. Teach a child to cook before it is ten or the cause is hopeless. When I think of the John Grier home, and how we were chased away from the kitchens! Perhaps we should have wasted a little had we been admitted to bake biscuits and chop carrots, but how much we should have learned! Well, I am learning now, Jervis. I am learning that I cannot cook, but that it is less awful to clean if one does it for a place that one is proud of, and that college was the beginning of the world and not its end and that there are wonderful things beyond it. 

So don't you see, I can't give up this taste of freedom even for the best kind of obligation, until I have finished growing in it? I am free! To do what I will and do it well or bust for every moment of the day. I _can't_ go from being in an orphan asylum to a college to being your wife, and never for one moment being responsible for myself. Lock Willow would be well enough if I had found it for myself, but I didn't, and Mrs Semple treats me like one of her chicks who can't quite be trusted with its seed, and Mr Griggs told me that I should stay (I meant to ask, was that really you, or Mr Griggs being independent-minded because you were ill?). When you have come and we have been together here, I am going to leave again. I am going to show that I can be an independent being responsible for myself. I shan't be alone - no man is an island, nor woman neither - see how my education has taught me to mangle quotes! - but I shall demonstrate self-reliance, and see how people live in another way. Tell me that you understand this. I am sure that you do. After all, if your sister had her way you should have married some suitable woman ten years ago, or at whatever age you had acquired the money that Mrs Pendleton thinks necessary before a man can support a wife, and have worked at Mr Pendleton's business. You neither think nor do as your family wishes, so you can't possibly have expected to fall in love with a woman who would do what you want, however meekly I may have obeyed some (though not all!) of Daddy Long-Legs' strictures. By the way, is there a version of the marriage ceremony without "obey" in it? I should simply hate to have to lie to you at our wedding.

If this has not persuaded you, perhaps you are thinking that you can brow-beat me into doing what you want, but you cannot! Consider, dear Jervis, that I stood up to Daddy Long-Legs and I stood up to Jervis Pendleton, and I told you both that I wouldn't be bludgeoned and overborne by your authority. Perhaps you think that I ought to find it twice as hard to stand up to the two of you combined, but no, it is twice as easy! There is only one of you and I am well-practiced in beating you both. Though I have to stand up to myself, too, and oh, that is hard. If I had my way I'd marry you tomorrow, but I can't, Jervis, you must see that. You must content yourself with the independent young woman who has written a book and will live with Sally McBride and do settlement work for six months, and oh, because I would have told Daddy Long-Legs everything, and so I must tell you, because I can't bear to spend the rest of my life knowing that people are always saying I caught you when you were ill. Indeed it is your duty to be so thoroughly well by Christmas that you squire a different woman into dinner every night and are flirted with by them all. But don't you dare like them more than you like me!

There, I have said my piece. I ought to finish with something more soothing for the invalid, but I fear that either it would mislead you to thinking that I am weak and can be persuaded, which would infuriate me, or make you think that I believe because you have been ill you are a fool, which would infuriate you. So I shall send only my best love, and Mrs Semple's cake wrapped in wax paper, which she promises will 'set you up', and wish to see you very, very soon. 

Your loving

Judy


End file.
